The final screening of the “Monthly Classics Double-Edged Sword” series has arrived! On Friday, May 14, the monthly classics will finish off with a clang, screening Kazuo Ikehiro’s The Lone Stalker (6:30 PM) and Kenji Misumi’s The Devil’s Temple (8:30 PM), two rare and wonderfully unique films for the series’ stars: Raizo Ichikawa and Shintaro Katsu.
The Lone Stalker
A.K.A. Lone Wolf Isazo
ひとり狼 (Hitori Okami)
Friday, May 14, 6:30 PM
1968, 83 min., 16mm, color, in Japanese with English subtitles. Directed by Kazuo Ikehiro. With Raizo Ichikawa, Isamu Nagato, Mayumi Ogawa. Print courtesy of The Japan Foundation with permission from Kadokawa Pictures.
The epitome of the matatabi (samurai gambler) movie, Lone Wolf Isazo ranks as one of Raizo Ichikawa’s most spectacular performances. Employing flashbacks within flashbacks and a brooding romantic style poised somewhere between Budd Boetticher and early Sergio Leone, director Kazuo Ikehiro charts Isazo’s descent from chivalrous naïf to vengeance-obsessed cynical wanderer, giving a definitive chronicle of the loneliness of the long-distance wanderer.
The Devil's Temple
鬼の棲む館 (Oni no Sumu Yakata)
Friday, May 14, 8:30 PM
1969, 76 min., 35 mm, in Japanese with English subtitles. Directed by Kenji Misumi. With Shintaro Katsu. Print courtesy of Kadokawa Pictures.
In this little known Misumi masterpiece, an abandoned temple nestled in the mountains is the scene of a fateful encounter between a Buddhist monk, two women in love with the same man, and a fallen samurai (Katsu, at his most ferocious). As destinies collide: it appears that not just the lives of the quartet are at stake, but their very souls. Hell awaits!
For more information and to book tickets, visit http://www.japansociety.org/film
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